MELISSA SUSPECT LINKED TO 1984 SLAYING

John KassCHICAGO TRIBUNE

An Aurora man charged with the murder of 7-year-old Melissa Ackerman is being investigated for a similar crime against a nurse who was forced off a road, raped and killed in a muddy quarry before dawn one year ago, law enforcement sources said Sunday.

Brian Dugan, 28, is being held in the LaSalle County Jail awaiting trial on 14 counts of murder, aggravated kidnaping and aggravated criminal sexual assault against Melissa, the Somonauk, Ill., child who was abducted while riding her bicycle with a friend on June 2.

While FBI agents and local authorities last month investigated Dugan in Melissa`s abduction, they traced a car that Dugan owned in July, 1984, to a Yorkville-area car lot, sources said.

According to those sources, the car is believed to have been used in the abduction and slaying of Donna Schnorr, 27 who died one year ago--July 15, 1984. Paint samples taken from the car match scrapings taken from Schnorr`s 1979 Chevrolet, the sources said.

But the sources said they have no witnesses to the crime and Dugan has denied any involvement in Schnorr`s death.

Despite the new lead, investigators have been unable to place Dugan in the car at the time Schnorr was killed.

Schnorr, of Geneva, was driving home from a party when her car was sideswiped and forced off a road near her home. A witness later told Kane County Sheriff`s investigators that she was awakened by a woman`s repeated screams and the blaring of a car horn. Two cars were on the shoulder of the road the witness said, but when police arrived they found Schnorr`s car sitting alone.

The investigation into the killing and abduction of Schnorr stalled during the year as authorities unsuccessfully searched for witnesses to the crime and clues about the car she had been forced into before she was raped, beaten and drowned.

In the Ackerman case, Dugan has admitted driving through Somonauk on June 2 and near a drainage ditch where Melissa`s body eventually was found covered with flat rocks. Dugan was arrested on June 3 and subsequently charged in separate abduction-rapes of two young Aurora-area women and in another attack against a third woman.

After Melissa`s abduction, FBI and law enforcement offices from surrounding counties began piecing together clues in the child`s

disappearance. When Dugan was arrested the day after Melissa was abducted, investigators searched his rented Aurora room, interviewed his friends and checked state automobile registrations.

During the investigation, police discovered the whereabouts of a car Dugan had owned on or about July 15 last year, when Donna Schnorr was slain, sources said. The car is being examined for evidence, according to the sources.

Schnorr, formerly of the small rural village of Waterman, lived in Geneva and worked at the Mercy Center for Health Care Services, Aurora.

Kane County sheriff`s police said Schnorr left a party at 3:15 a.m. that Sunday morning and was followed by two friends in their own car until she turned off Ill. Hwy. 31 at Grace Street to connect with Randall Road, the route she usually followed home.

At about 4 a.m. a witness reported hearing a crash on Randall Road and hearing a woman scream several times as an automobile horn blared repeatedly in the darkness. Police found Schnorr`s abandoned car minutes later in a roadside ditch and traced the car to the woman.

An hour and a half after police arrived at the scene where the car was seen, Schnorr`s partly clad body was found floating face down in the water that had collected in the bottom of a quarry 6 miles away in Blackberrry Township.

Schnorr`s mother, Clara, said her family had reunited at her home this week for the anniversary of her daughter`s death. Mrs. Schnorr said her husband, Bernard, who had suffered a heart attack the day after learning of his daughter`s murder, suffered a fatal attack on Dec. 27, 1984.

''Bernie died when Donna died,'' said Mrs. Schnorr as she cried. ''He never got over it. That killed him. She was his pride and joy and they found her like that.''